


The Heart of the Storm

by fall_into_life



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Injury, Suicidal Ideation, Vampires, it's all original characters y'all, queer woman of color, some past wlm content, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 11:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fall_into_life/pseuds/fall_into_life
Summary: When halfblood rebel Anri gets ambushed by conservative vampire Marissa Tempesta, she expects a quick, clean death. It doesn't quite happen that way.





	The Heart of the Storm

“Do you honestly want to die?”

Anri keeps her eyes on the ground. She can smell blood and metal, feel the slow fall of magic. Her sword lies out of reach, her soul aches right down to the root. Even if she wanted to fight, there would be nothing left to do it with. It’s taking all her willpower to stay on only one bended knee, to fight the black spots swimming at the edges of her vision.

“I don’t want to,” Anri says, knowing deep within herself that it is a lie, “but I think I should.”

There’s a long silence. She can hear her partner’s pained wheezing, his grunts of pain as he reaches for his weapon. There’s a sharp _crack_ , the hiss of breath through his teeth. Someone has broken one of his bones. Likely the older Tempesta sister; the tip of Marissa’s longsword hovers just inside Anri’s field of vision, and it hasn’t moved.

The Tempesta sisters came out of nowhere, one slamming Anri’s partner into the wall and the other lunging for Anri’s heart with sword outstretched. She’d jerked out of the way, but only succeeded in having herself impaled instead of outright killed. The struggle afterward had been short and vicious; even using her strongest shadows, they had been soundly outmatched.

Now, she kneels like an animal in a dirty back alley. Even in her worst moments, when Anri’s mind screamed that she was as inhuman, as disgusting, as she’d been told growing up, she hadn’t imagined dying this way. It was a clean slice to her throat in the night, or her neck snapped by one of her clan’s many enemies. Not this.

“Get up.”

The words come so suddenly that Anri can do no more than sway in response. She’d sunk inside herself, fall into pain and let despair spread oil-black over her thoughts. A strong hand grabs her shoulder - the good one, and it’s a mercy she wouldn’t have expected - and pulls her upward. Anri stumbles, catching herself on a nearby wall.

“Life is too precious to be wasted that way,” Marissa says crisply, pushing Anri towards the end of the alley. “Sister, if you would procure her weapon?”

Somewhere, in some corner of her mind where Anri values herself enough not to commit suicide, she appreciates that her sword isn’t being left to the mercies of some street thug come into a weapon far beyond his means. She doesn’t quite follow the old ways, but her sword is a part of her nonetheless.

“I wouldn’t think a vampire would say that about a mortal life.” Anri limps along with Marissa, feeling more than hearing the other Tempesta move behind them.

“And I wouldn’t think a halfblood could keep up with me for even a moment.” The words are so matter-of-fact that Anri doesn’t even realize they’re an insult until she’s being pushed into a limousine with leather seating that she is surely about to stain.

Anri manages a half-snort, and flicks her gaze between the Tempesta sisters, not quite meeting either set of crystal blue eyes. “You ambushed me in the middle of the night, after I fought half of your security forces. It would have been a different story otherwise.”

“Perhaps,” Marissa allows, tilting her head.

Anri never thought she would see the Tempesta sisters in person. There’s a sense of power and presence to them that photographs can’t capture, a fluid grace in the way they move around one another. In pictures, their pale skin and delicate features bring to mind porcelain. In person, Anri remembers that porcelain must walk through fire to be beautiful.

They ride in silence, until Anri can’t help but ask: “What about my partner?”

Andri and Jacob are no longer close, but he was still her responsibility, still part of her clan. He’s among the most militant of them, the first to advocate violence and the last to pull out of a fight. His zeal broke their romantic relationship, but it hasn’t broken their friendship or clan bond. He doesn’t deserve to bleed out in a back alley, forgotten until one of their police contacts discovers another covered-up halfblood death.

“I sent up a flare in your colors when we left,” Venilia says, speaking for the first time. “Your people will come for him.” A humorless smile spreads over her face. “Not that he will be of use to them for the next while.”

Anger burns clear and bright in Anri’s chest, and she sets her jaw, focusing on her slowly-healing shoulder. No one speaks until the limousine rolls to a halt in front of a mansion Anri has seen too many pictures of to not recognize.

“You took me home with you?”

Marissa snorts. “There isn’t a jail that could hold you.”

It’s true, but doesn’t make any sense of Marissa’s decision to bring her to Tempesta Mansion instead of killing her. Anri stays silent through the Tempesta siblings escorting her into the mansion, through Venilia inspecting her now-closed wound and pronouncing it fine until evening, through Marissa leading her down a labyrinthine series of hallways.

They venture into a room that smells too strongly of Marissa to be anything but her bedroom, and Marissa turns to her, holding one pale wrist up to her mouth. A minute flex of her jaw, and the rich scent of vampire blood fills the air. “Come here.”

_‘I’m not drinking that,’_ Anri thinks, but cautiously steps forward anyway.

Marissa reaches for her with all the certainty of someone who is used to their demands being met immediately. Anri restrains a flinch. Marissa’s right hand - the one with the bleeding wrist - holds her jaw in place, cool fingers firm. The fingers of her left touch the sluggishly-bleeding wound, then she smears something across the skin of Anri’s forehead. By the time she realizes Marissa is drawing arune, it’s over.

“If you try to run, I’ll feel it,” Marissa tells her, stepping backward. She pulls a cloth from one of the pockets of her coat, cleaning off both wrist and fingers with quick, elegant motions. “You won’t be able to work magic until the rune is removed, which I don’t recommend you try.”

Anri reaches for her magic, for the darkness inside her that she manifests as shadows. It doesn’t respond. She knows it’s there, but it’s as if there’s only smoke inside her, intangible and easily dispersed.

“You’ll be sleeping in my guest chamber.” Marissa walks towards one of the doors in her room, not so much as glancing backwards to be sure Anri will follow.

She does follow. It isn’t as though she has a choice.

The guest room has a bed, a side table, and an open door leading to a bathroom. It’s not as large as the main room, without a single window or vent in sight. Anri has gotten out of worse situations. She steps inside, turning to face her captor.

“We will speak more in the morning,” Marissa says.

She waits a moment, but Anri doesn’t say a word. There’s nothing to be said; this is all temporary. She doesn’t know why Marissa Tempesta, of the infamous Tempesta vampire line, would want to keep a halfblood in her home, but Anri won’t be here long enough to find out.

“Goodnight.” Marissa closes the door. Anri waits, but there’s no click of a lock, no sound of bars being placed or furniture pushed in front of the door, no flex of magic as a ward activates. Just the faint sound of a door opening and closing. Then silence.

Anri collapses on the bed, closing her eyes. She’s been in worse situations, but not by much. She’s in a house full of combat-trained vampires, with neither magic nor sword. She’s healed enough to move without much pain, but she needs blood, food, and rest to get back into fighting condition. She doesn’t know where Kage is, or if the sword will answer her without her magic to channel into it. And though Jacob will surely come for her when he’s recovered, he has at least one broken bone. Judging by Venilia’s words, that isn’t his only injury.

She tries to meditate on ways to escape, but exhaustion soon pulls her under. The last conscious thought she has before sleep is the question Marissa asked in the alley.

_‘Do you honestly want to die?’_

Maybe she does.


End file.
